Breaking into The Beehive was shockingly easy. Gary, Peter, Adrian, and Greg took over setting up the barricades while Andy, the Reverend Green, and David (the barman from The Old Familiar prepared the drinks. With a hearty toast of “Eight!” the patrons drank deeply.

Shortly, the drunken elation began to fade and was replaced a deep exhaustion. Even Gary agreed that a quick nap was in order before finishing The Mile. Just an hour or so, give those robots a chance to calm down. And man, weren’t this benches comfortable.

The last thing they saw was the Reverend Green opening standing up and walking towards the front door. Then the blue lights. Then darkness.

- - -

The next morning the patrons said their good-byes in the village green beneath the statue of the giant robot. All agreed that among the many advantages of being part of the Network was a complete lack of hangovers. Good-byes said, the out of towners loaded up their vehicles headed out into the world, looking for the next infiltration point.

The Network is victorious! Hats off to Iron Clad Burrito, FurinMirado, and Smirker.

I think that depends on whether you consider PJ and I to be one misfire or two.

[Insincere] regrets former meatbag. My guilt over your sister's untimely smashing was pulped with the rest of my former [weak] body. I only view it as a single misfire. Maybe you should not taunt others to kill you?

I only [Sincere] regret that I was not allowed to use my former fleshsack as a ventriloquist dummy.

[[I really was kicking myself over that before. Which is part of why I was so happy when I did take down Ozy. ]]

Smirker wrote:[Insincere] regrets former meatbag. My guilt over your sister's untimely smashing was pulped with the rest of my former [weak] body. I only view it as a single misfire. Maybe you should not taunt others to kill you?

Heh. Ultimately, the goal was to get people to finally give up half-heartedly trying to lynch us and move the discussion back to actually hunting Network. Shooting us did accomplish that, so there's that at least.

I kind of assume Okaros is out to backstab me until proven otherwise. - DOM

Since there was some confusion in the wolf thread (and probably the main thread) about my Rictus read (either how certain I was, or thinking it was similar to strength to ICB's), and my post in the dead thread to address it is unnecessarily long, I'm going to post the important part here.

The adjective/adverb "strong(ly)" refers to my emphatic human reads, the ones I'm willing to die for. Anything other than phrases like "strong human read," "strongly believe," etc. or more obvious phrases like "lock human," "is human," etc. should be read as, at best, a weak human read. An easy test to differentiate between the two: if the phrase doesn't contain "strong(ly)" and leaves room for me to waffle, it's a weak read.

I've made a grand total of 3 strong reads since the Draker game: Ryvvn in Miller's hollow, ICB in Night Vale, and Rictus in this game. All of them were human.

If I use that terminology, I will act as if that player had been Seer'ed human. That's how strongly I believe in my read.

-------

Also, Rictus had a post after I was shot saying that I would've been a good shot 5 days ago, before I started being "typical Hellheart." My standard play is going to be that (relatively) more muted style, both because I'll have less time to play and because my hyperaggressive periods rarely result in wolf lynches.

However, what I like to term my "flailing state," which is what happened near the end of Day 9 until I got shot, is still going to be there since that's when I'm at my best. I just want to try to skip the 2+ days of shitty play I usually end up having in between, and transition directly from an advising role to "what the hell is he doing? Does HE even know what he's doing?"

Hellheart wrote:Since there was some confusion in the wolf thread (and probably the main thread) about my Rictus read (either how certain I was, or thinking it was similar to strength to ICB's), and my post in the dead thread to address it is unnecessarily long, I'm going to post the important part here.

The adjective/adverb "strong(ly)" refers to my emphatic human reads, the ones I'm willing to die for. Anything other than phrases like "strong human read," "strongly believe," etc. or more obvious phrases like "lock human," "is human," etc. should be read as, at best, a weak human read. An easy test to differentiate between the two: if the phrase doesn't contain "strong(ly)" and leaves room for me to waffle, it's a weak read.

I've made a grand total of 3 strong reads since the Draker game: Ryvvn in Miller's hollow, ICB in Night Vale, and Rictus in this game. All of them were human.

If I use that terminology, I will act as if that player had been Seer'ed human. That's how strongly I believe in my read.

You do what you want, but after how thoroughly ICB bamboozled you this game, I don't think you should expect anyone else to have any confidence in your ability to read other players.

In fact, if someone does claim to believe one of your reads just because you call it "strong," I'm going to assume that they're trying to play you just like ICB did.

Speaking of which, I think a special congratulations is due to ICB for playing such a great game-- has anyone else ever started out as one of the original converters and survived all the way until the end?

I think ICB did a great job. I spent most of the game thinking "man, ICB is too emotionally invested in his forum. He wants to think he was able build the perfect human network when obviously it's been compromised. ". So I had this "poor ICB he's gonna be devastated when we find the wolf in his forum!"

It was only after Smirker was lynched when I began to rethink ICB. My old notes about admetus on day 3 , Hellheart's post about ICB/stigmata/rictus had a wolf in it, etc. plus your tepid votes on Ravebomb and antipater. ICBs name kept turning upon the wrong places on votes. But I was painfully aware that everyone had bad votes. As far as I remember, we never had a wolf up for lynch.

For me, the two human (theoretically, anyways) private boards were the biggest non-player factors in the game. ICBs did a good job of explaining suspicious behavior for ICB,HH, etc. even Ravebomb seemed more human after I looked at ICBs board.

And my misunderstanding about meta4s board was huge. When spheonodont corrected my understanding, it just took the winds out of my sail. I didn't have the will/energy/drive to keep looking when everyone was a suspect again.

Fm, Nice work as a wolf GA. Why you weren't lynched is a mystery... And I was just as culpable as the other humans. Next time we kill the GA right after the seer.

And Smirker nice work on just the right amount of pressure on other wolves took keep your human cred after conversion.

And finally, good job vigs. Without you guys we wouldn't have had any wolves at all to analyze.

Ozymandias wrote:Speaking of which, I think a special congratulations is due to ICB for playing such a great game-- has anyone else ever started out as one of the original converters and survived all the way until the end?

So say we all:

ICB had a flawless victory. When did you say your next game was?

More in a bit,

7z7

"Zark Helmet is too awesome NOT to use!" -Smirker"The possibility that it's Zark simply murdering someone at a whim each day... would be delightful if true, but I worry that that's too simple a solution." - Okaros

Hellheart wrote:Since there was some confusion in the wolf thread (and probably the main thread) about my Rictus read (either how certain I was, or thinking it was similar to strength to ICB's), and my post in the dead thread to address it is unnecessarily long, I'm going to post the important part here.

The adjective/adverb "strong(ly)" refers to my emphatic human reads, the ones I'm willing to die for. Anything other than phrases like "strong human read," "strongly believe," etc. or more obvious phrases like "lock human," "is human," etc. should be read as, at best, a weak human read. An easy test to differentiate between the two: if the phrase doesn't contain "strong(ly)" and leaves room for me to waffle, it's a weak read.

I've made a grand total of 3 strong reads since the Draker game: Ryvvn in Miller's hollow, ICB in Night Vale, and Rictus in this game. All of them were human.

If I use that terminology, I will act as if that player had been Seer'ed human. That's how strongly I believe in my read.

You do what you want, but after how thoroughly ICB bamboozled you this game, I don't think you should expect anyone else to have any confidence in your ability to read other players.

In fact, if someone does claim to believe one of your reads just because you call it "strong," I'm going to assume that they're trying to play you just like ICB did.

More to the point, if you (Hellheart) are the only one who understands the distinctions in what you say, then it's effectively a useless distinction for the rest of the players. I read all your posts as extremely certain that ICB was human (which broke my heart, of course). If I were playing at that point, it would not have helped me reach a different conclusion

But that said, I think Hellheart getting shot was basically the nail in the coffin for the humans. he may have been in flail mode, but once he was gone, it was awfully quiet--just Rictus trying to put the pieces together with ICB, Furin, and Smirker content to nudge it where it needed to go. Spheno's revelation about the outright lie Smirker made about the meta4 forum was just way too late to help (and yes, I know Smirker-as-human legitimately misinterpreted the post, but at the time he pulled it out as a wolf, he knew better).

It was a great game for the wolves, despite conversion setbacks. I just wish the humans had made more of a contest of it. Seems like lack of time and erroneous assumptions did most of the damage for the wolves.

PJ's general resignation towards fate is good enough. -OkarosThen he went and shot himself, saved me and got himself lynched because of it. You magnificent fool! -Mister E. Meat

Ozymandias wrote:You do what you want, but after how thoroughly ICB bamboozled you this game, I don't think you should expect anyone else to have any confidence in your ability to read other players.

In fact, if someone does claim to believe one of your reads just because you call it "strong," I'm going to assume that they're trying to play you just like ICB did.

I'm not allowed to think that somebody is human? O_o

(( This bothers me because this is your statement in logic form: "Hellheart seemed to be really confident in a poor human read this one time, therefore none of his reads should ever be trusted." This is classic wolf logic...or rekard logic . In other words, it's trolling at best and belittling/insulting at worst. Sometimes people are wrong, and encouraging people to base their entire opinion of a player's ability on something they did wrong is grossly unfair.

I made a lot of incorrect reads this game, including saying you were human and saying that Stigmata was a wolf. Most of those were earlier reads, and IMO counterbalanced somewhat by my defense of the twins and Smirker. But I made a lot of correct reads late as well, and some of those were very unpopular and still very correct. If people had listened to me late and lynched Stigmata over San, then I probably solo-push Furin on Day 11. I may have even realized that ICB was a wolf on Day 10 because {ICB, Rictus} would be safe and I was certain that Rictus was human. ))

All I'm saying is that there's a difference between when I think somebody is human (which, as you said, is something that shouldn't be blindly trusted) and when I'm SURE somebody is human (which I'm only going to say when I'm pretty much dead certain).

I already went into great detail as to why I was so emphatic with how much I was defending ICB, and you're right that I did think he was human, but it was a weak read the entire time and I communicated it as such. I was just really vocal about it because I needed to be defended in return

That PJ wrote:More to the point, if you (Hellheart) are the only one who understands the distinctions in what you say, then it's effectively a useless distinction for the rest of the players. I read all your posts as extremely certain that ICB was human (which broke my heart, of course). If I were playing at that point, it would not have helped me reach a different conclusion.

I completely agree with you. That's why I made that post, and I'll probably highlight weak reads and strong reads as such, assuming I remember, for at least a couple more games. Having to label them kind of breaks my train of thought, but it's better to be correctly interpreted than anything else.

In a general sense, I need my human reads to be at least seriously considered because I suck at finding wolves. But if I'm not dealing with a huge blind spot, I'm really good at finding humans.

Hellheart wrote:In a general sense, I need my human reads to be at least seriously considered because I suck at finding wolves. But if I'm not dealing with a huge blind spot, I'm really good at finding humans.

I should have challenged the in-forum assumption that ICB was human stronger than I did. Generally speaking, I trust your reads, but that can be a liability in conversion games. Which is why I considered your conversion on day 8 a real possibility.

I am very curious about one point: I retracted my day 10 vote for Hellheart well before the cutoff:

My hope was that since you're both a strong analyst and a strong personality that you could bring this one back from the brink, but I had no intel to contribute towards this goal (other than a suspicion of Furin which was knocked to one side by his GA reveal that I missed). Given more time to ponder, I might have voted Furin even though there would not be critical mass to keep me in the game.

in the end, ICB was just too hidden. Kudos Ben.

More in a bit,

7z7

"Zark Helmet is too awesome NOT to use!" -Smirker"The possibility that it's Zark simply murdering someone at a whim each day... would be delightful if true, but I worry that that's too simple a solution." - Okaros

You need to work on your delivery. Everyone makes mistakes, many mistakes even. But Hellheart, the way you express your "reads" is so bold that makes your mistakes look even bigger.

It becomes a version of " The boy who cried wolf". You boldly say so many guesses that by a point in the game, few people will be believing you. Players don't have to adapt to how you say things, you have to change your delivery system. It doesn't matter that you got a couple right in the game when you got 10-20 other wrong ones. It also doesn't help that you become very critical if people don't do what you wanted.

If you want cred, you need players to want to believe you. And things like what you were doing on the last days don't attract believers, they attract vig shots.

Rictus wrote:And finally, good job vigs. Without you guys we wouldn't have had any wolves at all to analyze.

And yet, I was in a perfect position to ferret out the wolves (and strongly suspected all of them!), yet talked myself out of it and didn't sound out those suspicions.

Maybe next game I should vig myself.

If it's any consolation, I will vig you if I get the chance.

Good game overall, although I think a wolf starting as a forum owner helped quite a bit, although it didn't help that humans were too open. They should have distrusted more. For example, in my SCP game, when Clear and ICB were in the same board, they hid stuff and didn't share much until things were more confirmed. Rave did pretty well in that regard I would say.

necklessone wrote:Oversight. I don't actually do much more than skim the day thread so I might miss retractions that don't have subsequent votes.

Thank you for the clarification. I'm very glad it didn't turn into a "let's lynch hellheart" based upon me turning up human.

More in a bit,

7z7

"Zark Helmet is too awesome NOT to use!" -Smirker"The possibility that it's Zark simply murdering someone at a whim each day... would be delightful if true, but I worry that that's too simple a solution." - Okaros

rekard wrote:You need to work on your delivery. Everyone makes mistakes, many mistakes even. But Hellheart, the way you express your "reads" is so bold that makes your mistakes look even bigger.

It becomes a version of " The boy who cried wolf". You boldly say so many guesses that by a point in the game, few people will be believing you. Players don't have to adapt to how you say things, you have to change your delivery system. It doesn't matter that you got a couple right in the game when you got 10-20 other wrong ones. It also doesn't help that you become very critical if people don't do what you wanted.

If you want cred, you need players to want to believe you. And things like what you were doing on the last days don't attract believers, they attract vig shots.

I can agree with this. My overaggressiveness on Day 6-9 (har!) pretty much fit that to a T, since I figured that'd make me an awful conversion target. That's exactly what I'm trying to stop, because I'm wrong in that state so often that it ends up being exactly what you describe.

But even after that change, I do need to condense my reads, probably closer to what I made in my post at the start of Day 11. Unorganized and short, but clear and reasonably composed within each point. It'll make me seem like a wolf though because I'll be quieter in general. Not much I can do about that.

But what happened at the end of Day 9 is always going to be there. I just need to learn to keep the reads to myself as I'm developing them. Helps keep people more off balance too, which is helpful since the entire point of that state is to pull reads from off-balance players.

Dude. You still look like a wolf right now. There will never be a "Crazy Hellheart is human Hellheart" shtick, because you're involved enough to actually do the same as a wolf. Actually, I would say that if you get calmer, more people will believe in you and you'll stop being a vigshot magnet. If you want to be a reference for credible reads, the aggressiveness crazy thing doesn't work.

rekard wrote:Dude. You still look like a wolf right now. There will never be a "Crazy Hellheart is human Hellheart" shtick, because you're involved enough to actually do the same as a wolf. Actually, I would say that if you get calmer, more people will believe in you and you'll stop being a vigshot magnet. If you want to be a reference for credible reads, the aggressiveness crazy thing doesn't work.

What, do you mean that in order to appear human I have to stop having fun?

I don't think that getting shot by nicotine-deprived DOM should even count as an actual Vig shot.

It depends on choices. I mean, Ravebomb plays for fun with random shenanigans here and there, and he doesn't concern himself as much with people believing in him for his shenanigans.

Hellheart, you seem to want to do the same having fun while at the same time, you want to be taken seriously in your guesses and argument. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You have to choose to a degree.

Else, the same thing will happen every game. You will die and say "I was right" with no real demonstrable evidence, with people not believing you because you were just flailing around practically shouting stuff that players should do as you say. Then you will say again you want players to believe you despite doing things in the game that don't help in that regard.

You have to work better on how to convey a message, because if you want intrinsic credibility, it is not working.

7-zark-7 wrote:ICB had a flawless victory. When did you say your next game was?

Thanks for the kudos. That was stressful as HELL, though, and I did make a few bunch of mistakes along the way. Those have been discussed at length in the dead thread, so hey.

IF my manipulations genuinely upset anyone, I apologize. I did kinda play especially dirty, but it was all working SO WELL that I couldn't stop.

When's my next game? Well, I've got most everything off my plate now except the house shopping (BTW, every bit of what I said happened IRL in that one post was 100% true, no bullshit). But I've got to devote more time to that and frankly, I'm emotionally drained from the game, so I'll be taking a game or two off and see how it goes from there. Besides, with the run of wolf roles I've had, I'm bound to be human for the next dozen games, where I think nearly everyone owes me a lynch or a vig now, and rekard still has to get some supervengeance on me and rave.

7-zark-7 wrote:ICB had a flawless victory. When did you say your next game was?

Thanks for the kudos. That was stressful as HELL, though, and I did make a few bunch of mistakes along the way. Those have been discussed at length in the dead thread, so hey.

IF my manipulations genuinely upset anyone, I apologize. I did kinda play especially dirty, but it was all working SO WELL that I couldn't stop.

When's my next game? Well, I've got most everything off my plate now except the house shopping (BTW, every bit of what I said happened IRL in that one post was 100% true, no bullshit). But I've got to devote more time to that and frankly, I'm emotionally drained from the game, so I'll be taking a game or two off and see how it goes from there. Besides, with the run of wolf roles I've had, I'm bound to be human for the next dozen games, where I think nearly everyone owes me a lynch or a vig now, and rekard still has to get some supervengeance on me and rave.

So yeah. I'll be around, but not playing for a while.

Back in a bit,ICB

Obviously, you don't understand that repeatedly dying on Day 1 & 2 relieves all of the stress from the game. (Remember those games where I was bitching about being alive on Day 5 and actually having to read the boards? Yeah, that's why ) The goal is to get so many people out for revenge that you barely have to worry about logging in and voting.